Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a device maintenance apparatus, a device maintenance system, a device maintenance method, a device maintenance program, and a storage medium.
Priority is claimed on Japanese Patent Application No. 2016-126004, filed on Jun. 24, 2016, the contents of which are incorporated herein by reference.
Description of Related Art
In a plant, a factory, or the like (hereinafter, collectively referred to as a “plant”), for example, an industrial plant such as a chemical industrial plant, a plant for managing and controlling a wellhead such as a gas field and oil field and its surroundings, a plant for managing and controlling an electrical power generation such as water power, fire power, and nuclear power, a plant for managing and controlling an energy harvesting such as photovoltaic power generation and wind-power generation, and a plant for managing and controlling a water and sewerage, and a dam, a distributed control system (DCS) in which on-site devices such as measures and actuators, which are referred to as field devices, are connected via a communication means to controllers, which control the field devices, has been implemented to realize a high level of automated operation. In the plant in which such a distributed control system is implemented, the maintenance for the field devices (hereinafter, also simplified and referred to as “devices”) is regularly or irregularly performed by workers in order to prevent abnormal operation, maintain measurement accuracy, and the like.
The maintenance of the field devices is performed using a device maintenance apparatus capable of performing wire communication or wireless communication with the field devices. The device maintenance apparatus includes, for example, a laptop computer, a tablet computer, a PDA (Personal Digital Assistant), and a smartphone, each of which a program provided for maintaining the field devices is installed into. Every field device can retain one or a plurality of pieces of device information. The device information refers to information relating to the field device and includes, for example, information for setting an operation of the field device, information indicating a state of the field device, or identification information of the field device.
A device maintenance apparatus is connected to a field device to intercommunicate therewith, and can execute a maintenance process with respect to device information of the field device (hereinafter referred to as a “maintenance process”). The maintenance process includes, for example, a process of reading and checking device information set for the field device, a process of setting new device information for the field device, a process of adjusting or changing the device information set for the field device, and a process of setting the device information for the field device and causing it to execute a predetermined operation.
Field devices and a control apparatus that controls the field devices are connected to each other via an input/output (I/O) module. The I/O module has an interface for the control apparatus and an interface for the field devices. The I/O module can connect a plurality of field devices to the interface for the field devices. Accordingly, the control apparatus can communicate with the plurality of field devices via the I/O module. In addition, the I/O module has an interface for the device maintenance apparatus. Since the I/O module has the interface for the device maintenance apparatus and the interface for the field devices, the device maintenance apparatus can communicate with the plurality of field devices via the I/O module and can execute a maintenance process on the plurality of field devices (for example, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application, First Publication No. 2016-81415). Furthermore, there is a method of setting a parameter input into a prepared template for the field devices (for example, US Patent Application, Publication No. 2015/0066162).
However, since the device maintenance apparatus individually executes the maintenance process on the field devices, an operator may perform operations for executing the maintenance process on each of the field devices even when the plurality of field devices are connected to the I/O module. When a plant is constructed, for example, maintenance processes of setting device information on many field devices or performing adjusting processes on the field devices are performed at a time, and thus it may be necessary for an operator to invest a long work time in device processing using a device maintenance apparatus. For example, when there are 100 field devices on which 10 kinds of maintenance processes are to be performed in a plant, an operator may have to operate a device maintenance apparatus 100×10=1,000 times.
In addition, if the number of operations increases, a human error such as an input mistake made by an operator may occur.
Furthermore, when parameters input to templates are set for field devices, it is necessary for an operator to check a correspondence between the templates and the field devices, which may lower work efficiency.